The present inventive technology relates to the field of electronic data storage and transmission. The present inventive technology may be used more particularly, but not exclusively, to supplement or replace conventional electronic data compression technologies to achieve improved efficiencies in such electronic data storage and transmission.
Compression technologies are widely employed in the field of electronic data storage and transmission to increase the efficiencies of such storage and transmission. The benefits of compression are well known, and many conventional approaches to the compression of electronic data exist. However, compression technologies may fail to address some of the principal causes of inefficiencies in electronic data storage and transmission.
For example, electronic data may tend to exist in a widely dispersed nature. In an electronic communications network, electronic data may exist at different nodes or termini of the network. On a computing device, electronic data may be stored in disparate locations in computer memory. In one conventional technology, a client may be required to make multiple requests of a server to load a World Wide Web page, in as much as the electronic data required by the client to load the page may be located at disparate locations on the server. For example, a client typically may require multiple CSS, script, and image files from the server to load the page. If these files are located at different locations on the server, as typically may be the case, the client may be required to make a separate request for every separate location at which the necessary electronic data may be found, leading to inefficiencies that conventional compression technologies do not address.
In addition, compression technologies often may modify the conventional infrastructure of modern electronic data storage and transmission technologies. For example, compression technologies may often act to alter basic infrastructure elements such as the TCP, IP, or HTTP layers of Internet and World Wide Web electronic data transmission. Implementing these alterations may require an expenditure of resources, such as perhaps the time and costs associated with developing, installing, and maintaining the software and hardware elements, and it may be inherently undesirable to alter the underlying infrastructure of electronic data storage and transmission. Conventional compression technologies accordingly may not be well suited to utilizing such conventional infrastructure it its most efficient manner.
Compression technologies also may not take full advantage of electronic automation. For example, certain kinds of electronic data amalgamation, such as the creation of image sprites or the limiting of the accumulation of dynamically generated content on World Wide Web pages, may conventionally have required significant human action, implementation, or supervision.
It also may be the case that compression technologies may not conventionally be leveraged to their fullest effect. For example, image compression schemes such as JPG, GIF, or PNG may only act to compress an individual image file, and may not be leveraged to take advantage of additional compression possibilities across multiple compressed image files.
In addition, compression technologies may be context unaware. For example, in compressing electronic data to improve the efficiency of transmission, conventional compression may only be able to compress such data in its entirety or not at all, and may not be able to distinguish those portions of the electronic data having an actual use at the receiving end from those portions of the electronic data that may go unused at the receiving end.
The foregoing problems related to conventional compression technologies may represent a long-felt need for an effective solution to the same. While implementing elements may have been available, actual attempts to meet this need may have been lacking to some degree. This may have been due to a failure of those having ordinary skill in the art to fully appreciate or understand the nature of the problems and challenges involved. As a result of this lack of understanding, attempts to meet these long-felt needs may have failed to effectively solve one or more of the problems or challenges here identified. These attempts may even have led away from the technical directions taken by the present inventive technology and may even result in the achievements of the present inventive technology being considered to some degree an unexpected result of the approach taken by some in the field.